


Ratbag dirty, getting clean

by Multifandom_damnation



Category: 6 Underground (2019)
Genre: Accidental Bonding, Embarrassment, Emotional Baggage, Gen, Jewelry, Kleptomania, Pickpockets, Post-Canon, Shopping Malls, Team Bonding, Team Dynamics, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-16
Updated: 2020-02-16
Packaged: 2021-02-27 21:13:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22752307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Multifandom_damnation/pseuds/Multifandom_damnation
Summary: One is fairly certain that he's out of his mind when he has a thought he can't shake that involves taking Four shopping and dealing with the consequences, and when Two and Three fail to talk him out of it (not that they were really trying), One had no choice but to go through with his plan. But let's just say that it doesn't go exactly as he thought it would and that maybe he learns some unexpected things about his teammate in the process.
Relationships: Four | Billy & One (6 Underground)
Comments: 13
Kudos: 184





	Ratbag dirty, getting clean

**Author's Note:**

> This show is so hard to write for, you guys, this group is so hard to write for, I mean, good god. We need more content for them because one movie isn't enough. But I've recently joined a new discord server for the movie, and I love it and everyone in it very much, and I'm getting more and more motivated to write (and thanks to an anon on Tumblr who requested this in particular) so even though this took me longer than it should have, it's finally here! Yay! I hope you enjoy it because I quite like it. Enjoy x

One was fairly certain that he was going crazy, and he wished that he could blame it on the heat of the California desert or the isolation, but he couldn’t really consider himself lonely with all his teammates surrounding him, and he had fixed the airconditioning in all the trailers and planes so the heat was actually tolerable. 

The most detestable outcome was that he was just feeling generous, and that was something that he needed to adjust right away.

Five was checking over all her equipment in the medical wing to make sure that they had enough supplies and Four was off doing who knew what, probably something dangerous at an isolated part of the base and Seven was in his trailer like a smart person under the aircon, so One sought out Two and Three, who would be holed up in the armoury.

He gave the door a cursory knock. “Are you decent?”

Three’s snarky reply was “We’re never decent,” and One recognized that he was in the clear and he barged inside before he could change his mind.

“I need one of you to tell me that I’m not losing my fucking mind,” One demanded the moment the door shut behind him, and he marched his way towards them and waved his hands about. “Please? If you don’t, there’s a chance that I may not be able to cope.”

From where she was leaning back in a chair with a gun across her lap and her feet up on the table, Two groaned. “Jesus, what stupid idea have you gotten into that big head of yours this time?”

“I have this strange, overwhelming urge to go shopping. With _Four_ ,” One paced back and forth across the floor of the armoury and Three moved out of the way to give him room. “Just the very _thought_ is giving me a headache, and I haven’t even mentioned it to him yet!”

“I don’t understand the problem,” Two said. “You’re rich. Rich people love to go shopping.”

“The _problem_ is that Four is a walking, talking _disaster_ ,” One said, turning to her with a desperate expression. “Can you imagine him in a store like Gucci, or Louis Vuitton? And those are just clothes. What if he finds a shop full of Rolex watches or Swarovski crystal jewellery? The kid's a kleptomaniac! He’ll slip thousands of dollars worth of objects into his pocket before I’d even realize that he’d taken it!”

“Oh, come on,” Three scoffed. “It’s not that big of a deal. I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

Wide-eyed, One turned to Three and poked him sharply in the chest, and Three held his arms up in defence as he tried not to laugh. “Why would you even _say_ that? How could you put this curse on me? It’s all going to go to shit now and it’s all your fault!”

Exasperated now, Two’s eyes fluttered shut in frustration. Three was starting to go red in the face and make snorting sounds from how hard he was trying to hold back his laughter. “Why the fuck do you want to take Four shopping in the first place? You’ve never expressed an interest in taking any of us shopping before. Why now? And why Four?”

Horrified with himself, One gripped the sides of his face as he frantically paced back and forth. “I don’t know- it’s just that he owns literally one pair of ratty old shoes, three sets of clothes and most of them have holes in them, one jacket that’s stained with who knows what, and I don’t even want to think about the state of his few pairs of underwear. Even you guys, who don’t give a shit what you look like, own more clothes than you could ever need. It’s just fucking weird that he’s got a home now and he still acts like he’s living on the streets. Did you see him rationing his food last week? As if we were going to take it away from him.”

Interrupting, Two held up her hand. “We own so many clothes because we’re often undercover. Bi-Four’s not. He’s on rooftops running around and risking his life and trying not to fall to his death. He doesn’t need fancy clothes for that. He needs functional clothes. Maybe the clothes he has are the only ones that he could find to suit his needs? What about Seven? He’s distant from the action and he doesn’t own tonnes of clothes.”

“Yeah, but Seven owns more than three sets of clothes,” One insisted. “Six loved his outfits! And the only reason why Five’s only nice clothes are her undercover clothes is that she gets blood on everything! I don’t know, I just think that taking him shopping would be good for him. He’s lived his whole life stealing things. I don’t think he’s ever _brought_ something that he could call his own. Now that we’re dead, he doesn’t have to worry about any of that stuff. None of us do.”

“Then what’s the fucking problem?” Two crossed her arms over her chest. “Take him shopping and shut the fuck up about it. It’s your idea.”

“I’m sure it’ll be fun,” Three agreed. “You’re used to wrangling him enough by now to keep him out of trouble for a few hours.”

Wildly, One waved his arms in their faces in an attempt to silence them before Three could finish his sentence, but it was no use. He groaned and pinched at the bridge of his nose. “No! I came here for you to talk me _out_ of going, not encourage it!”

The grin that pulled across Three’s face was cocky and familiar. “Then you picked the worst people to ask.”

Eventually, One broached the subject to Four, and less than an hour later, they had their bags packed and Four was lacing up his only pair of shoes and One was triple checking his pockets to make sure his wallet was still in one of them. One drove in silence and Four sat beside him in the passenger seat, jittering with nervous energy. 

As expected, the mall was full of people, inside and out, which made One somewhat nervous. He was comfortable around people, considering now that he technically didn’t exist anymore, but you never knew what could happen, especially with Four, who was only slightly less of a disaster than Three. A couple of times, he considered dipping into the nearest Target or baby shop to buy one of those child leashes with the animals for Four.

They had known each other for a while, so One recognized Four’s tells pretty well by now, so when a well-dressed couple wearing fine jewellery and an expensive watch walked past, he was not at all surprised to turn back and see Four removing his hands from the gentleman’s back pocket with his wallet caught between his fingers. “ _Four_ ,” One sighed, already exhausted with the whole outing.

At the mention of his name, Four froze, made an unhappy face at the back of One’s head, then spun on his heel to tap the man on the shoulder before he could get too far away. “Excuse me, sir, I think you dropped this.”

The expensive-looking man in the fancy suit turned to Four with an annoyed look until he realized that the rough-looking kid was holding his wallet, embossed with his initials and thicker than it had any right to be. Confused, he pat down his pockets before he held out his hand with a furrowed brow. “Oh- thank you.”

Already turning away, Four dropped the wallet and the rich man scrambled for it before it could hit the floor, sending a frustrated look in his direction. Four walked away, shoving his hands in his pockets as he caught up with One, looking bored out of his brains. “What the hell was that?” One demanded when they were close enough. Four merely shrugged. “You don’t need that money.”

“Neither does he,” Four grumbled, shoulders hunched and his hands in his pockets. “It’s not like he would have noticed that it was missing. He’s probably got so much money in the bank that a missing wallet wouldn’t have even left a dent in his funds.” He shot One a frustrated look. “What the hell are we doing here? I’ve got shit to do back at base.”

“Other than fucking around with Five’s equipment just to piss her off and jumping on the roofs of all the trailers so you can leave dints that I have to fix? I don’t fucking think so,” One scoffed as he shoved Four though the open glass doors of a store that he didn’t catch the name of- some long French word that Two would probably laugh at him for not knowing- but the prices on some of the items on display through the window had enough digits to be considered an expensive store. “In you go. Pick something you like, but hurry up because I don’t have all day.”

Blinking, Four stumbled into the store in a rare moment of clumsiness and looked around the store with wide-eyes as he took in the many watches and jewellery and pressed patterned shirts and perfect looking suits, all of which had very long pricetags with many numbers and lots of zeros tagged on at the end. The jewels sparkled under the overhead lights, and the expensive fabric the suits were made out of shimmered like magic. For a moment, One was so sure that Four was going to rush forward and pick out the most expensive item and prepared to pull his card from his wallet buried deep within his most protected pocket. Instead, Four pivoted and darted out of the store faster than One could even comprehend, and by the time he realized that Four had disappeared, One followed after him and chased him halfway back the way he came, hood up, hands in his pockets, walking fast.

“Woah!” One called as he caught up to Four and stopped his escape by grabbing hold of his hoodie with an iron fist. “Where the hell are you going? What the fuck was that?”

“The fuck are you doing, tricking me into going in there?” Four snapped, spinning around and snarling like a wild animal. “You know people like me can’t go into stores like that! What were you _thinking_?” Spat on the floor and it landed near One’s shoe.

One’s brow furrowed as the words hit him and he looked at the wet stop on the ground. “What do you mean, ‘people like you’?”

" _Thieves_ ," Four hissed, "Pour kids who grew up on the streets taking food from stalls and clothes from shop fronts and expensive things to pawn just to survive. We don't belong in those shops, and those rich picks who live and breathe money _know it."_

"Four, relax," One urged as Four tried to wiggle free from his grasp, "I wasn't taking you in there to make you feel bad or rub your poverty in your face. You know I'm not about that. I brought you here because you only own one pair of shoes and three shirts and I thought that if I was going to let you buy shit then I would let you choose something _nice_ and not the shitty cheap stuff from Target or whatever.”

Confused, Four stopped trying to tug away and if it weren’t for the feral expression on Four’s young yet scarred face, it would have almost looked cute. “Why the absolute fuck would you do that? For _me?_ ”

“What do you mean why- Four, we’re a _team_. We’re ghosts. We’ve got no one but each other. I’d do the same thing for any of the others, but right now, you’re the one with holes in his only pair of shoes,” One insisted, somewhat flustered. “If you don’t want to buy fancy things, fine, we’ll just go to Target ad get you something else. I don’t care where you get it from as long as you get it. I just thought that considering your _history_ , you’d like to buy something expensive, but if not, that’s fucking fine. I just need you to buy _something_ , because frankly, I’m sick and tired of seeing you in the same fucking outfit every god damn day.”

“I thought you didn’t give a fuck about us,” Four retorted, eyes daring around frantically for an exit and still looking like he wanted to run, “That’s your mantra, right? The rule you live your life by?”

One felt like he wanted to dive headlong off the nearest pier. “ _No_ , kid, I don’t give a fuck about being a _family_. Being a team is entirely different! Do you think that I would have brought you here if I didn’t give a fuck? I don’t need an entourage to leave the base. If I just wanted some company to go shopping, I would have brought Five or Seven. They’re _much_ less complicated.”

The look on Four’s face made One falter as he averted his eyes and seemed to hunch in on himself, fists clenched, head down, a frustrated blush risen on his pale cheeks. “Shut the fuck up with that shit, man. I don’t want your fucking sympathy or your pity. I’m not about that fucking life.” 

Sighing, One looked around him to make sure that they weren’t attracting too much attention from the many shoppers passing by, and stepped forward to place a hand on Four’s shoulder. Four still refused to look at him, and like that, with his head down and his hair obscuring his face and his feet shuffling on the spot, One was reminded harshly of how _young_ Four was. He was the youngest member of the team by a number of years, and yet his position was the most dangerous. Sure, breaking into important buildings, killing government officials and getting shot at almost every day of the week was hard, but it was nothing compared to leaping across skyscrapers and monuments thousands of feet tall without any safety gear and being on the verge of near-death most days was difficult to even imagine. One would rather dodge bullets during a high-speed canoe chase than pray that he kept his footing as he scaled a 40 story building any day of the week. One wrong step and that would be the end of him.

He remembered when he met Four. He had watched him jump across the rooftops with a bunch of kids all dressed in shitty clothes, and when he fell, they abandoned him so they could escape with the loot. One had looked for where he had fallen, down the back end of an alley and hidden by rubbish bags and the now-broken tarp he had fallen through, covered in cuts and bruises and blood. Maybe pulling that prank on him had been cruel, but One had cleaned the blood from his skin while he slept and he hadn’t had a good laugh in a while, so he thought that he was entitled to a well-deserved practical joke. 

The one thing that had stuck with him was the fear in Four’s eyes. You wouldn’t think that a rough-and-tumble kid like that, who leapt over rooftops for pleasure would be afraid of having a bag over his head, but One knew what he saw. He had teased him for it at the time, but the longer they were teammates, the more it evolved into a running gag that all of the Ghosts were in on. The first time that he’d ever openly admitted to being scared without any prompting without any of the team was up on that pier, mere moments before he dove off into the icy water as he swam towards Rovach’s yacht, and it had caught One unawares. Though he couldn’t _see_ the fear on his face, One knew that his words were genuine, and he swore to himself that he would get to know Four better so he didn’t have to admit to the others when he was afraid and One was never caught unawares again.

But the look on Four’s face now was one that he recognized- it was the same expression that he wore the night they met, moments after One pulled the bag off his head and pointed the gun in his face. The expression of pure, unadulterated fear.

“Four,” One said, and the words were so familiar and comforting that they slipped off his tongue with ease. “Are you afraid?”

The look Four sent him, glancing up through his bushy eyebrows, was scathing. “Of course I’m fucking afraid. What the fuck do you expect, man? I can’t go into places like that. You know damn well that I… I can’t. I don’t know what you were thinking, dragging me here? You should have _known_ better.”

“I was _thinking_ ,” One interjected. “That you would like something expensive and flashy because you used to steal that kind of stuff all the time.”

Looking skittish, Four drummed his fingers against his thighs. “Yeah, I stole it to pawn off so I could get a decent payday .”

“Maybe so,” One continued, voice even and gentle, as if trying to calm a feral animal, which wasn’t an inaccurate comparison. “I just assumed that you would want to own something expensive that you brought. You know, paid for with you actual money. But I’m not going to force you into doing anything. I just thought that it would be nice for you. But if you don’t want to go in there, we’ll go somewhere else. Walmart or Target or some shit like that.’

The expression on Four’s face was so painful that One felt it deep within his soul. He was just so _young_. _God_ , what the fuck had One been _thinking_ when he recruited him? “One, I don't have any money, and especially not enough to buy anything in _there_.”

“Dude, why do you think you’re here with me instead of Three or Seven?” One scoffed.

Four raised an eyebrow. “Because you’re a little less of a disaster than Javier and more task-focused than Blaine?”

Gritting his teeth at the improper use of names that he hated so much, One shook his head. “No, _Four_ , I came because I’m the guy with all the _money_.” One took his hand off of Four’s shoulder when he finally looked back up to meet One’s eyes with his thick eyebrows pulled together in confusion. “So, do you want to go back into that store, or not? We don’t have to, but I’m not leaving here until I get you at least one pair of new boots with actual tread and a few shirts so I don’t have to see you in the same stupid outfits every fucking day.”

Though he still looked sceptical, Four didn’t look quite as skittish, and though One wasn’t ordinarily a patient person, he waited until Four eventually nodded, slowly, and licked his lips. “Yeah, alright. We can try it again, I guess. But the moment someone in there starts to look at me funny…”

“I’ll kill them and we’ll leave immediately,” One finished the sentence and turned back towards the store, not bothering to tell Four to follow, trusting that he would take the hint. And after a couple of seconds, he heard Four’s footsteps follow hurriedly after him.

“Thanks, One,” Four said quietly, hands back in his pockets, voice just loud enough for One to hear. “I appreciate it.”

“Please, for the love of _God_ , don’t mention it ever again,” One tossed over his shoulder, barely turning his head. “Now, I don’t know about you, but I’m thinking something gold…”

When they returned back to base in the California desert, arms laden with bags, the word had obviously gotten around about their shopping trip because everyone was waiting for them expectantly, arms crossed as they leant up against one of the planes closest to the entrance. Three put his fingers to his lips and wolf-whistled once they were in ear-shot. “Who’s this stylish young man?” he teased and Four spun around with his arms raised to his sides, and the end of his long coat flared outwards, the buckles on his new boots glinting in the sunlight.

“Hotshot,” Two grinned as Seven laughed and gave Four a thumbs up. “No showing off now, you hear?”

“I’ll try my best,” Four laughed as One came up behind him and smacked him affectionately on the back of the head, dumping the rest of the shopping bags at his feet as he went to join the others. “Who knew that One had style?”

He was nearly knocked over his feet as Five ran up to him and wrapped her arms around his shoulders, giggling as she pulled away and held him at arm's length, looking him over. “Billy, you look so good! I thought I’d never see you outside of climbing leathers and ratty gear. It’s nice”

“Are you telling me that you could have been looking like this the whole time and chose not to?” Seven scoffed as Four came close enough, finally free from Five’s hold, and reached out a hand to spin him around in a full circle, looking him up and down with a raised eyebrow. “What the hell’s going on in that thick skull of yours? This is much better than the other shit you were giving us.”

“Alright, that’s enough,” Four rolled his eyes and swatted away Three’s searching hands that ran up and down his body like he was experiencing it for the very first time. “Don’t get too used to it, either. I doubt we’ll get much downtime for me to wear this all that often, so it’ll be back to climbing gear for me soon enough. But look-” he held out his arm and pulled back his sleeve and the new gold band on his wrist with his number Four on it glittered brightly under the sunlight. “This was One’s idea- I have never had so much money in my possession all at once, and now it’s all mine? How crazy is that?”

Two looked towards One with a cocky smile, and One had to look away when Seven joined in with a knowing look in his eye. “Would you look at that? The tin man really does have a heart.”

“Well,” Four amended. “I’ve been specifically asked not to mention it any more, but I’m really happy with it.”

“Alright,” One grumbled, pushing off the plane he was leaning against. “Enough of this nonsense. Everyone, back to work.”

Maybe Two was right. Maybe a shopping trip was a good thing after all. Or, maybe One just gave Four’s ego an unnecessary boost. Either way, it was a good day nonetheless, and One was already thinking about the next bonding activity he can do with the rest of the team, even if it was already giving him a headache just thinking about it. It would be fun, though. 

Outings with the Ghost’s usually were.

**Author's Note:**

> Also, happy early birthday to my baby brother, who turns 16 tomorrow xx Love you shit head, even though I'll never let you see this x


End file.
